Mass Effect - Video Preview @ Esport.tv

September 17th, 2007, 16:10

Vistaer Dragon wrote in to tell us about a Mass Effect video at UK site Esport.tv. Their description of a "cool looking third person shooter that, according to developers, plays like a movie" is rather underwhelming, so here's the description Vistaer sent in:

In the last day in the UK there was a feature on Mass Effect on gamer TV. The video is now online and portrays parts of the assault on the criminal Fist mentioned in previous videos of Urdnot Wrex. It shows off for the first time aggressive (in red) diplomatic (in dark blue) dialogue options, their effects, and finishes off with showing just how brutal a simple conversation can be.

I really hope Bioware will not turn out to be the latest victim of the action game disease— not that I hate action games per se, but these days it seems that everything has to be one to be seen as commercially viable. But Bioware has a strong RPG identity, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I think those who buy ME and think that it is a third person shooter will be really disappointed. It is an RPG, a roleplaying game, in which your dialogue choices directly affects how, when, ehy& whom you can talk to throughout the game.

People expecting a shooter game like Gears of War should go play this game instead of playing Mass Effect. They probably won't understand that in order to hit properly with a small gun or use a certain skill you need to invest skill points into these skills&abilities.

I don't why Ray&Greg let their marketing department persuade Bioware into focusing on the shooter elements of the game, and the default Jack Bauer in space Dirty Harry type Shepard. Maybe Bioware hopes to get guys who are like this to play Mass Effect? Or thinks that all guys who play FPS games would like to see Shepard punch several people out, or something along tese lines?

Bioware needs to focus more in its roots in the RPG-community, I feel. Or else Bioware will go the way of Black Isle - and that would really be a shame…

I took it as being like Jade in the sense that the target audience is meant to be a combination of RPG players and action gamers — although in Mass Effect's case, the action gamers would be the Halo/Rainbow Six crowd, not the fighting-game crowd.

We'll see if that strategy is successful. It has a much stronger RPG layer than Jade did — or, perhaps better to say, in Mass Effect, the combat is difficult enough that people who just dump their points anywhere and don't play to their class's strengths are going to die an ugly death (unlike in Jade, where combat was designed by orders not to be that difficult).

In a perfect world, the action-shooter crowd plays it like an action game, and it's really hard for them (which they like), and the RPG crowd plays it while pausing to target and carefully allocating points, and it's a bit easier for them (and the plays-RPGs-and-action-shooters group plays it any way they like, and it's probably still challenging for them).

We'll see how it turns out. I'm no longer on the project, but the last few times I saw combat, it was shaping up really nicely.

Good to have inside feedback. However, while I'm keeping an open mind on this one, Bioware's history from Baldur's Gate to KotOR to Jade Empire has shown an incremental move from statistics-driven RPG towards polished, but shallow, story-driven action adventure. As an RPG fan I hope Mass Effect can reverse this trend.

MudsAnimalFriend, it's quite possibly just the m$ effect your seeing, which is still in play with ME.
The real test will be DA, but we will see in 2 years when the PC crowd finally gets ME and DA by that time.

— Trust me, most of the names I have been called you can't translate in any language…they're not even real words as much as a succession of violent images.

Originally Posted by MudsAnimalFriend
Good to have inside feedback. However, while I'm keeping an open mind on this one, Bioware's history from Baldur's Gate to KotOR to Jade Empire has shown an incremental move from statistics-driven RPG towards polished, but shallow, story-driven action adventure. As an RPG fan I hope Mass Effect can reverse this trend.

To answer this and be completely clear: you can pause the game, and whether you hit is determined by skills to a large degree, but yes, it's an action game.

Mind you, I consider game genres to be checkboxes, not exclusive choices. I think it's possible to have an RPG and an action game in the same title. So if "Action" is gonna bug you, then yes, you're not gonna like Mass Effect. While it has stats and a really strong RPG system, the combat feels action-y enough that people who absolutely hate action combat won't like it.

Just saying that in the spirit of honesty. Please avoid quoting this out of context on twenty other messageboards. I'm not saying that the game is bad. I frickin' love the combat. But I'm not going to lie and pretend that it's turn-based (or even click-and-wait like BG or NWN or KotOR). It's action combat, with some strategic elements from the pause-and-command system.